Balance and the Pressure of Success

File 770 had a post today that struck a chord with me. The Unauthorized Blog is a post that refers to a post on another blog by Jonathan McCalmont, where he described a his personal journey as a blogger, and how blogging can lead to a constant drive to get more links, more page views, ect. It got me to thinking and it suddenly hit me that blogging is not all that different than a popularity contest at times.

It could be just because I’m a man, or I was raised to be really competitive, but One of the things I love about WordPress is the ability to collect data about how may people view your blog, and how they got to your blog, and where they went from your blog. And it is all built in, with no hassle to set it up. This appeals to people like me who like to see how our blog is preforming in relation to other blogs. Which begs the question…”What is a successful Blog”.

Lorrelle on word press had a great post about “The Cyclical Nature of Blog Stats“. It seems that so many people, my self included, get hooked into this idea that their blog is successful if they get a large volume of readers. It makes sense. At least here in America, we almost seem to be indoctrinated from birth with the idea that bigger is better. The more cars a company sells, the more sales a person makes, the computers a company places in the hand of consumers, the more money a person makes; these are all indicators of success in America.

But is a blog successful just because it is popular? I’ve come to think this is not the case. A blog is successful it it fulfills it’s mission. My blog servers as a place for me to air out my thoughts, and keep in loose contact with people who are not in my every day life. I don’t need to be the #1 blog on Word Press. But that’s just my opinion on my blog…